"We Are All Cowards Now" is the third track to be shared from Costello's Hey Clockface LP, after last month's "Hetty O’Hara Confidential" and June's "No Flag".
Costello's latest single was also recorded at Suomenlinnan Studio in Helsinki back in February with Eetu Seppälä.
Hey Clockface will follow on from Costello's 2018 album Look Now with The Imposters.
The new LP was recorded between Helsinki, Paris and New York.
Costello says of the Paris sessions recorded with François Delabrière, "I sang live on the studio floor, directing from the vocal booth. We cut nine songs in two days. We spoke very little. Almost everything the musicians played was a spontaneous response to the song I was singing. I’d had a dream of recording in Paris like this, one day."
The sessions in New York were produced by composer Michael Leonhart in collaboration with guitarists Bill Frisell and Nels Cline. Costello says, "I wanted to write 'Helsinki-Paris-???' on the record jacket like this was a perfume or an advertising agency. ‘London' was a possibility for the third city but London is forever. We’ll be there again. Michael sent this music to me from New York at the perfect time. It connected to elements in both of the previous sessions and completed the picture."
Expanding on the record, Costello adds, "I wanted the record to be vivid, whether the songs demanded playing that was loud and jagged or intimate and beautiful."
Tracklist:
- Revolution #49
- No Flag
- They’re Not Laughing At Me Now
- Newspaper Pane
- I Do (Zula’s Song)
- We Are All Cowards Now
- Hey Clockface / How Can You Face Me?
- The Whirlwind
- Hetty O’Hara Confidential
- The Last Confession of Vivian Whip
- What Is It That I Need That I Don’t Already Have?
- Radio Is Everything
- I Can’t Say Her Name
- Byline
